Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Starts with La Nina, ends with El Nino

Over on Open Mind, Tamino has predicted (via a Sophisticated Mathematical Analysis) that 2009 will end up ranking as the 5th warmest year in the instrumental record, specifically the record from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS).

My question: if it happenstances that way, what does that do to the top 10?

Current list of top 10 warmest years, globally (Hadley Climate Research Unit T3)

1. 1998
2. 2005
3. 2003
4. 2002
5. 2004
6. 2006
7. 2007
8. 2001
9. 1997
10. 2008

GISS:

1. 2005
2. 1998, 2007
4. 2002
5. 2003, 2006
7. 2001, 2004
9. 2008
10. 1997

So if 2009 comes in 5th (let's put it 5th in both, even though the placement might be a little different in both), here's the new rankings:

HadCRUT3:

1. 1998
2. 2005
3. 2003
4. 2002
5. 2009
6. 2004
7. 2006
8. 2007
9. 2001
10. 1997

GISS:

1. 2005
2. 1998, 2007
4. 2002
5. 2009
6. 2003, 2006
8. 2001, 2004
10. 2008

Interesting is what this does to either data set. For Hadley, it drops the cool 2008 off the 10th spot, so this aberrant La Nina-influenced year is no longer in the conversation, and places 2-9 are all after Y2K. For GISS, 1997 drops out, leaving only one year not in the first decade of the 21st century in the top 10.

What was anyone (particularly the dissonauts) saying about a 10-year cooling trend?

(Dissonaut: a combination of dissenter, disparage, and dissonance, cognitive. Also implying
that most of them are spaced-out, spacey, or just plain space cadets.)

No comments: